Apache SSL Module on Ubuntu

[Joe San]

Guys,

I just installed apache2 using synaptic on my Ubuntu. I wanted to enable SSL for my apache2 installation and for the very same purpose, I tried the following:

sudo apt-get install libapache-mod-ssl

just to find out that I get the following response:

E: Unable to locate package libapache-mod-ssl

Any ideas?

[Joe San]

Seems that it is already installed along with when I installed apache server.

[Joe San]

But when I did a apache2ctl -M, it is not listing the mod_ssl module. How to know if this is installed or not and if not how to do it?

[Tim Holloway]

I think SSL is pretty well integrated these days. However, configure SSL in your apache setup and if you get errors on the SSL config statements, you'll know that it's not installed. Or that it's not switched on. In which case, look at your /etc/apache2 config files. You should have an SSL config file in there somewhere, I think.

[Joe San]

But before the SSL, I need to set up the mod_jk so that my Apache server communicates with Tomcat sitting behind. As i browsed through the websites, it all pointed to me that I should configure this in the httpd.conf by uncommenting just two lines, but to my surprise my httpd.conf located under /etc/apache2 is empty. Bemused.

[Pat Farrell]

Its normal for httpd.conf to be empty. modern debian based distros (and Ubuntu is Debian based) leave it empty, or under the control of the distribution.

most of what you want to control is done by making logical links in the appropriate subdirectory. Look at your /etc/apache2/sites-available directory, put your local server config there. Then go to ../sites-enabled and make a softlink to the sites-available.

Same approach for mods

All this stuff is standard these days.

[Joe San]

I have the following configuration:

workers.properties located in /etc/apahe2:

# Define 3 workers, 2 real workers using ajp12, ajp13, the last one being a loadbalancing worker 
worker.list=worker1, worker2, worker3
# Set properties for worker1 (ajp12)
worker.worker1.type=ajp13
worker.worker1.host=localhost
worker.worker1.port=1980
worker.worker1.lbfactor=1
# Set properties for worker2 (ajp13)
worker.worker2.type=ajp13
worker.worker2.host=localhost
worker.worker2.port=8009
worker.worker2.lbfactor=1
worker.worker2.connection_pool_timeout=600
worker.worker2.socket_keepalive=1
worker.worker2.socket_timeout=60
# Set properties for worker3 (lb) which use worker1 and worker2
worker.worker3.balance_workers=worker1,worker2

Tomcat configuration in server.xml:

<Connector port="1980" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />

The apache httpd.conf looks like this:

# Load mod_jk module
LoadModule    jk_module  /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so
# Declare the module for <IfModule directive> (remove this line on Apache 2.0.x)
# AddModule     mod_jk.c
# Where to find workers.properties
JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties
# Where to put jk shared memory
JkShmFile     /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.shm
# Where to put jk logs
JkLogFile     /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log
# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel    info
# Select the timestamp log format
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
# Send servlet for context /examples to worker named worker1
JkMount  /examples/servlet/* worker1
# Send JSPs  for context /examples to worker named worker1
JkMount  /* worker1

After all this, trying to access my webapp through Apache gave me a 404. Please correct me where it went wrong?

[Joe San]

I just found out from the error log that the Apache looks for the files to be located under /var/www and it does not seem to respect the httpd.conf configurations.

[Sat Mar 19 16:20:26 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.16 (Ubuntu) mod_jk/1.2.28 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Sat Mar 19 16:23:37 2011] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /var/www/examples

From the above log entry it is evident that when I accessed http://localhost/examples it straightaway looked for it under /var/www as I have configured my DocumentRoot as /var/www. Should this be a reason for the mod_jk not to work?

[Joe San]

Also noticed this peculiar thing. Everytime when I start my apache server, I get a warning saying that jk_module is already loaded. Why is this? Could this be the source of my original problem above?

 * Starting web server apache2               [Sat Mar 19 18:04:17 2011] [warn] module jk_module is already loaded, skipping
                                                                         [ OK ]
jothi@laptop:

~$

[Joe San]

Just found out that the jk_mod is enabled elsewhere other than from my httpd.conf (in mods-enabled and mods-available). So uncommented them and got rid of the warning above. But still not able to find my way out to solve the mystery of making apache communicate with Tomcat using the configuration that I made in my above post.

I'm sure this is just a simple configuration missing somewhere but where is the question for me now. I guess this must have been done a zillion of times by others. Google search did not pull any satisfying results. Any one from here could help me?

[Joe San]

OK. So finally I made it to wok. There was the VirtualHosts entry missing in my httpd.conf. As soon as I added it to my httpd.conf, it started working:

My httpd.conf looks like:

<VirtualHost *:80>  
     ServerName localhost  
     ServerAlias www.mywebsite.com  
     DocumentRoot /var/www  
     JKMount /* worker1  
</VirtualHost> 
# Load mod_jk module
LoadModule    jk_module  /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so
# Declare the module for <IfModule directive> (remove this line on Apache 2.0.x)
# AddModule     mod_jk.c
# Where to find workers.properties
JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties
# Where to put jk shared memory
JkShmFile     /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.shm
# Where to put jk logs
JkLogFile     /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log
# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel    info
# Select the timestamp log format
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "
# Send servlet for context /examples to worker named worker1
JkMount  /examples/* worker1
# Send JSPs  for context /examples to worker named worker1
JkMount  /* worker

1

But I'm now not able to view any apache manuals which happens to be showing up on access of the following url:

http://localhost/manual/en/index.html - Gives now a 404 ??? This happened after I added the VirtualHost in my httpd.conf.

[Joe San]

I commented out direct access to Tomcat by commenting out the following line:

    <!--Connector port="1979" protocol="HTTP/1.1" 
               connectionTimeout="20000" 
               redirectPort="8443" /-->

in Tomcat server.xml file of my Tomcat installation thereby preventing direct access to Tomcat.